


The Gay Imaoka meta-post

by brightblackbird



Category: Rookies - Morita Masanori & Related Fandoms
Genre: Canon - Japanese Drama, Canon - Manga, Embedded Images, Essays, M/M, Meta, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-16
Updated: 2017-07-16
Packaged: 2018-12-02 07:18:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11504430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brightblackbird/pseuds/brightblackbird
Summary: X-posted to Tumblr, the essay about how gay Imaoka is, examined through the lens of how his character is treated from a meta standpoint.





	The Gay Imaoka meta-post

**Author's Note:**

> images hosted on Tumblr, and taken variously from the scanlations, from the raws (when original dialogue differs significantly from the scanlations), and from my personal collection of the bunkoban releases. images from the bunkobans were taken with a phone camera and are warped slightly from their original alignment due to angles.

“Why are you constantly saying Imaoka is gay”

WELL.

You do have to keep in mind that A) Rookies is a Shonen Jump series and B) Morita-sensei in particular does very macho stuff for them that doesn't incorporate any of the bait-y gay subtext that some of their authors have started using to court a female audience.

The audience for Rookies was straight boys and Morita is... let's say he's more likely than not to be straight? I joke about him having a crush on Hiratsuka because he draws him naked so much, but I don't want to seriously speculate based just on his creative output.

And the likelihood of a Jump series having a gay character who's subtly (or... not so subtly) in love with his best friend, and for him to be just kind of quiet and odd as opposed to having that used as a gross joke, is EXTREMELY low.  Rookies in general is pretty darn gay from my perspective, but straight men do write an awful lot of stuff that ends up looking more gay than they intended, because a gay interpretation was just completely beyond their comprehension.

However, Imaoka is..... let's say, very very questionable.

First off, when he and Hiratsuka first appear in volume 3, they're not really themselves yet. Imaoka actually snaps at him for being late; even the dudebros on 2ch notice that as very out of line with his future character.

("Come to think of it, Imaoka used "てめー" in the beginning, didn't he?")

Even the Japanese wiki article for Rookies notes that he’s an aggressive delinquent like the others when he first shows up, but later becomes much more _norarikurari_ : withdrawn, laid back, difficult to read… however you want to put it.

They're also both holding their bags on the same arm here; in their next appearance, Imaoka has his on the right arm and Hiratsuka on the left, so they can walk next to each other. They walk to and from school together, and this is such a fixed routine that Imaoka will stop if Hiratsuka stops, even when he's impatient to get to school. Thanks to a later flashback, we know they've done this since middle school--it's not stated officially in the manga, but their character descriptions on the dorama's website state that they "teamed up" in middle school and now do everything together.

So why is this one scene so important?

Because the next time Hiratsuka's gathered with the other boys to look at Fujita-sensei's panties, Imaoka is completely absent. After this, there's exactly one scene in the rest of the manga where he shows any kind of interest in a girl. That element was _completely removed_ from his character as soon as Morita settled on what that character was going to be.

The first group of panty-watchers, in chapter 19, is Wakana, Yufune and Hiyama, joined shortly by Hiratsuka and Imaoka. Hiratsuka’s lines here indicate that Sekikawa and Mikoshiba (???) are usually here as well. (”They’re not _here_ either! That ain’t normal!”) ....Or perhaps that Hiratsuka is just making things up.

In chapter 23, it changes to Wakana, Yufune, Hiyama, Okada and Hiratsuka.

  


In chapter 28, they’re seen walking together before school, and Hiratsuka is later talking about Fujita-sensei’s panties.

HOWEVER, the Japanese dialogue kind of indicates that they didn’t bother peeping that morning: “Well, I dunno how that turned out. More importantly, I bet you guys don’t know what color Fujita-sensei’s panties are today.”

“ **But** I’ve finally figured out the rotation!”

(That is, he hasn’t seen them either but is sure he knows the color, because he’s figured out her schedule from the notes he keeps, in a totally normal and not at all weird way)

By volume 8 (chapter 69), Hiratsuka is more fixated on Touko and has also become a loser who doesn't hang out with the others as much, and Okada has become more cool-headed and quiet, so the group that lusts after Fujita-sensei is now Wakana, Yufune, Hiyama and Sekikawa.

(Okada accompanies them on the second trip to the flower-arranging room, but he's not there when they're talking about banging the teacher.)

(Imaoka is glimpsed briefly in this chapter, reading at his desk and oblivious to what's going on with the others. His seat is the furthest away from where the others hang out, one row and one column up from Hiratsuka's, and since Hiratsuka isn't there... he's just reading. Even though the rest of the team is decently friendly with him.)

For some reason, he’s NOT around to react to this? Even though half of his purpose as a character is reacting to Hiratsuka? Almost like Morita wanted to ~~draw Hiratsuka naked~~  have this particular gag play out without him there, because his reaction would be...... a little different from usual?

So, the characters who aren't shown to be skirt-chasers are Mikoshiba, Shinjo, Okada and Imaoka. But there can't be FOUR gay-coded characters in a manga like this. Mikoshiba is a good boy, Shinjo and Okada are the strong and silent types, and Imaoka is... shy? A late bloomer?

EXCEPT that there's another chapter (just two chapters later) where the other boys are lusting after Fujita-sensei. And in that one, Imaoka doesn't appear in a single panel.

Okada isn't one of the guys lusting after her, but he's visible several times chuckling in an encouraging way.

He's also seen briefly studying with the others, along with Shinjo and Mikoshiba. Even if Shinjo looks a little unenthusiastic.

Hiratsuka isn't there, because he’s presumably somewhere with Imaoka. There's no panel showing that, though, because, again, Imaoka doesn't appear in this chapter once.

If Hiratsuka is in the same row as Wakana, and Imaoka is one row and one column up from him to the right...

...he could have fit into this panel pretty easily to react to Hiratsuka shouting in the middle of class for no reason.

or this one.

or even this one.

In this (earlier) panel, even the two characters who sit around him, the boys who quit the baseball club early on, are visible, but Imaoka is _just_ out of frame for some reason.

His only presence is when Hiyama says that he and Hiratsuka are both getting 95 points for sure--it's not clear from how he says it whether they BOTH volunteered that, or whether Hiratsuka perhaps took it upon himself to make that claim. It sounds a little more like a Hiratsuka statement than an Imaoka one ("Ummm... I wanna get a strikeout."), but that's neither here nor there; the important thing is that one of the ten members on Nikogaku's baseball team is COMPLETELY absent from this entire chapter, and it's not because Morita forgot he existed.

He's just... not relevant to what's going on here, for some reason.

In chapter 80, there's another scene where Hiratsuka starts shouting in the middle of class; Imaoka actually leans INTO the shot to react even though Morita blocked it in such a way that his seat isn't visible.

There's also the matter of how often he's seen in Hiratsuka's vicinity; if I included every example of that, this post would crash your internet browser, because it's pretty much EVERY group shot. They're next to each other in those more consistently than any other pair on the team.

  


Even when no one else wants to be near Hiratsuka.

  
  


And if Imaoka's not right next to Hiratsuka, he's looking at him.

If the rest of the team stops while they’re all running...

Imaoka will keep running, following Hiratsuka until they both trip and fall over.

  
  


His response to Hiratsuka's crush on Toko is.... not exactly that of a supportive buddy. There's a sequence of Sekikawa and the other boys grimacing similarly when they see Aniya and Toko having a Moment—but all of them are open about their desire to have a girlfriend of their own. So, they're being comically bitter and disgusted out of envy, while Imaoka is.....?

(side note: 30 seconds prior to getting slapped for being a jackass, Hiratsuka is strangling him, tugging on his hair, etc.

>   _girl?? ?  !???!_

  


Imaoka’s _instant response_ to the slap is shock, horror and disgust at this miscarriage of justice.)

>   _girl slap ?!? ? ?!?!??_

In chapter 80, he gets very excited when Hiratsuka bribes him with pictures of idol/ _talento_ Uehara Sakura—but this line in the scanlation is a little bit off. They're not necessarily nude photos in the original text, they're _namajashin_ , which is just a specific type of promotional photo put out by her agency.

Trust me, being a huge fan of a popular female diva is not _exactly_ an impediment to being gay.

  


Prior to this, he was willing to skip class and throw 50 consecutive pitches while being personally insulted for being more successful.... because Hiratsuka told him to.

  


And for such a big fan of a singer, he had a pretty lukewarm response to actually being around singing girls. To the point that he's willing to do something on his own for once and rejoin the club that he originally left (because Hiratsuka told him to). 

When they're stopped on the way home (which they're doing together, in the company of nobody else on the team) Imaoka stops because Hiratsuka has stopped...

  


...and sits there for the entirety of a conversation in which he is not participating, or even particularly interested, except for reacting to Hiratsuka, and only Hiratsuka.

  


He never shows any interest in Hamanaka beyond Hiratsuka's relationship to him. 

  


He leaves school instead of going to practice the following day, because that's what Hiratsuka is doing.

When Toko says she saw the two of them leaving together, she doesn't even bother with Imaoka's name; they're "Hiratsuka-kun-tachi" and everybody knows exactly who she means.

When Hiratsuka dashes away, followed by Hamanaka, he just kind of wanders off to practice—so he clearly didn't even want to leave that much in the first place. He just did it because Hiratsuka was telling him to.

When the team has a question about Hiratsuka, they ask Imaoka, because they know he will know the answer. Even if it's about something from middle school, that could easily have happened when he wasn't around—but of _course_ he was around, because he's always around Hiratsuka.

In fact, when _anyone_ has a question about Hiratsuka, they go to Imaoka as the most reliable source of information.

  


 

> _“ｇｉｒｌｓ” “HIRACCHI”_

And when the other boys are ogling girls as a group.....

  


(he’s in the bottom right corner)

  


...he's in the background, saying nothing.

So, while I'd usually be pretty skeptical about the idea of a character being coded as gay in a manga like Rookies, the combination of...

  * the near total lack of interest in girls, in a manga where more than half the team is aggressively horny for them


  * the fact that they're nearly always together in group shots, and this is more than likely because Imaoka gravitates towards Hiratsuka as the place he feels most comfortable


  * the fact that he and Hiratsuka seem to spend approximately 95% of their time together when off the field


  * the fact that his character arc seems at one point to be headed towards something dealing with his self-esteem, only for that to be entirely dropped and his character basically turned into "guy who reacts to Hiratsuka”


  * the bizarre fixation on Hiratsuka's well-being (in contrast to how he shrugs it off injuries to anyone else, including himself)


  * the fact that the drama felt the need not only to make him and Hiratsuka the two pervert characters, but also give him an active straight crush on Fujita-sensei, when in the manga he never has anything to do with her character after that first scene



...all of that combined is just incredibly suspicious.

See also his response when Sekikawa and Mikoshiba actually get seriously injured:

  


> :^|

>  B^/

  


>   _“well, that happened”_

...in contrast to tragedies like Hiratsuka falling over...  

  


...or drinking tabasco sauce...

  


 ...or getting hit in the arm.

  


Or even just getting his feelings hurt.

  


And certainly in contrast to the amount of interest Hiratsuka shows when _he_ gets injured.

  


And finally just the fact that he's the only member of Nikogaku who (in the manga) doesn't get any kind of short personal arc.

Sekikawa, Yufune and Okada all get one chapter focusing on them where we explore their inner life a little more. To me personally, Imaoka and Hiratsuka seem to be among Morita's favorite characters, but for some reason Imaoka didn't get any closer development.

  
  


Not only that, but his "most admired person" seems to have been (deliberately??) excluded from this page. The scanlation inserted Kawato as the answer, either by mistake or assuming it was a printing error, but this doesn’t seem to _be_ a printing error; it appears in both the tankobon and bunkoban releases and has never been corrected to anything.

(The idea of him admiring Hiratsuka may seem questionable, but when you think about it: to a quiet and passive person, Hiratsuka does have a few traits worth emulating.)

I'm also 99% sure he never gets a single thought bubble or piece of inner narration where we see what he's actually thinking, again, unlike every other member of the team. He's supposed to be hard to read, yeah, but it almost seems like something was SUPPOSED to be there, but didn't make it in.

...Though, again, Morita does very macho boys' manga. It's just... I don't know. Suspicious. Maybe the Uehara Sakura thing means he's supposed to be some shitnerd otaku who's completely devoted to a woman he'll never meet? But that's mentioned all of once in very little detail (in comparison with Hiratsuka obsessing over Toko, but still showing interest in whatever "nice thing" Fujita-sensei's going to do for them in chapter 69).

Even in the one-shot sequel, which Morita drew in response to the drama coming out, Imaoka has 3 lines (Shinjo and Okada have zero), and they're ALL about Hiratsuka. And this was prompted by the drama, where Imaoka is pretty indisputably into girls.

On another note: Toko is Aniya's childhood friend who has feelings for him, while he keeps chasing after other girls. They attended the same middle school, she has a special nickname for him that no one else uses, and she understands him and calls him out in a way that no one does.

  
  
  


In the one-shot, she gets one panel of "Kei-chan..." while Imaoka gets three "Hiracchi!"s.

I guess to be blunt, it probably comes down to whether Morita himself is gay or bi. If he's straight, then he almost certainly did not mean for one of his favorite characters to be interpreted as gay, and in love with the one who is pretty clearly his absolute favorite in the entire manga.

But, Jesus Christ, WHAT DOES THIS PAGE MEAN

WHAT DOES IT MEAN

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN

(context: [Morita took part in a drawing relay for PiTaPa](http://en.rocketnews24.com/2016/02/10/manga-anime-and-video-game-artists-draw-each-others-pictures-with-surprising-results/) and chose to replace the moe girls in the illustration before his with........ Hiratsuka and Imaoka. Seven years after the last part of the drama adaptation was released, and _thirteen years_ after the manga ended. Both of them were necessary to the picture, because wherever Hiratsuka is, there must also be Imaoka.)

_July 2017:_

I have also now updated this essay because Morita-sensei revealed where the characters are 3 years after their graduation, and Imaoka is........

....making videos.

While Hiratsuka is a Youtuber trying to ride Pikotaro's coattails. Pikotaro is not a livestreamer; he makes videos that require actual production and editing.

I'm going to say this as one of the world’s leading Hiratsuka experts: there is _no conceivable situation_ in which Hiratsuka is letting this opportunity for free filming and editing pass him by. They are absolutely still in contact after high school.

Aniya and Mikoshiba both went pro, and we know they're on the same team, but there's absolutely no word on how the longstanding Aniya/Toko relationship is doing. That being the alleged _actual, textual_ romantic subplot of the manga.

So, THAT is why Imaoka is gay, and Imahira is definitely confirmed canon now.


End file.
